During the summer months, Rice crops waved over fields of thousands of acres in extent, and upon a surface so level and unbroken, that in casting one's eye up and down the river, there was not for miles, an intervening object to obstruct the sight.¹

These rice fields in Georgetown County, South Carolina lie abandoned now, covered over with wild grasses that provide feasts for thousands of birds and, near the shoreline, a haven for a few remaining river alligators. The rice fields were carved out of tidal swamps along coastal rivers by slaves brought to South Carolina from the West Indies and West Africa. With primitive tools, the slaves cleared the low-lying land of huge cypress and gum trees, and built canals, dikes, and trunks (small floodgates) that allowed the flooding and draining of fields with the high and low tides. From the 18th century to the Civil War, slaves planted, tended, and harvested the crops that made plantation owners wealthy and Georgetown County, South Carolina, the second largest rice producer in the world.

¹(G.S.S., "Sketches of the Santee River," The American Monthly Magazine, October 1836.)